Knit on, with confidence and hope...
...and stripes in a fine gauge.
Since leaving Instagram last May I no longer have to contend with regular scolding about the dangers of engaging in business as usual in times like these, beamed out from some disembodied phone or computer to mine. After the distance of over a year I’m no longer patient or numb enough to passively absorb the pointed fingers and cruel judgements that folks fling around in that space in order to check the trueness of their own moral compasses. In reality, we can’t engage in business as usual because it’s no longer an option- both the business and the usual having swiftly transformed like a new cotton shirt put in the dryer on hot- never to be the same again. I read the news between my fingers and brace myself for the fallout: we lost funding, he lost coverage, they lost care. Friends scramble to schedule surgeries and register marriages while they are still available for us queers to acquire. Our grant writing pals crack their knuckles and sharpen their skills of appeal. There will be art. I’ve got one eye on the bulk beans and another on the hard fruit swelling on the Juneberry branches, slated to be ripe by July. I know I should write a form response for all of the emails in my inbox, the anguished apologies about unsubscribing. “It’s alright. We’re all cutting back” I think tenderly as I mark the messages unread again, for later, mentally reconfiguring our monthly budget smaller and smaller. But instead of responding later I turn away from my inbox, avoid my computer altogether, shun my phone with its splintered screen and bad lag. I fill pots with soil and squash lily beetles between my nails and shuffle the clean laundry from the basement out onto the line. I wash my hands and fill them with wool, sort rice, fold pleats into linen. I forget to photograph a single thing and then forget to be mad at myself about it.
What is it to build a life in times like these? I feel- from lingering mass thinking on social media- the dregs of shame for what I’ve got (when others have so little) and the howl of indignation over what I don’t (when others have so much). Those two thoughts bicker and whine with one another until they become background hum, easily drowned out by the clack of my needles and the complex reality of life being lived in the foreground. From the couch, where I am tethered to three cones of wool and a tangle of thoughts, I imagine a headline, shouted from the street by a paper hawker “knitting extinguishes shame! Read all about it!” I reach, with gratitude, for the next color. I love to work- to move with purpose through a task, sure of my steps. Those days when I can be in motion from first eye-crack until I collapse into bed are when I feel my place in the world, the soft and muddy walls of the tunnel I’ve carved out for myself. Thank goodness for the campanula always needing to be pulled up. Thank goodness for rice to rinse and onions to chop. Thank goodness for good old fashioned knitting and weaving. Over the last many months I’ve spent a lot of time deep in my head, so much that I’ve come to seek out and design specific work to occupy my hands while I think my thoughts. Thank goodness for muscle memory, exquisitely honed. In addition to providing lubrication for the mechanics of my brain, this sort of subconscious production often yields fun, uninhibited work that seems to fall out of my hands fully finished, my mind having been so fully elsewhere during its creation. This is not the moment for overwrought planning- this is the optimal time for the slow and laborious processes, the kind of work that consumes the body, lulls it into a rhythmic system of movement. Building.
Sweater Details
My design, using EPS semi-successfully hacked to be worked from the top down (my numbers came out too high and I did a lot of ripping back). Yarn is Harrisville Shetland, knit off the cone. Needles… maybe US4? and US2 for the rib? Sorry- my notes were minimal and mostly ignored! I used a sewn bind off at the wrists and hem.
love u and your writing g
Have never thought of designing my own jersey until this moment. Thanks for sharing.